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HRC Exposes Treasure Trove of “Confidential” NOM Strategy Documents

Solmonese: NOM’s brutal honesty is a game-changer

03/27/2012

Washington - Yesterday the Human Rights Campaign obtained a series of documents marked “confidential” that outlined the National Organization for Marriage’s multi-year plan to stop marriage equality in the United States. In one of the documents titled “NOM Deposition Exhibit 25: National Organization for Marriage Board Update 2008-2009” these passages appear:

The strategic goal…is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…

The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity - a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.

“Nothing beats hearing from the horse’s mouth exactly how callous and extremist this group really is,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “Such brutal honesty is a game changer, and this time NOM can’t spin and twist its way out of creating an imagined rift between LGBT people and African Americans or Hispanics.”

The documents detail NOM’s goals, including “2010 Priority: Roll Back Gay Marriage in New Hampshire, Iowa, and D.C.” and “keeping gay marriage controversial in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut.” Marriage equality has in fact not been rolled back in either of these states or D.C.

In NOM Deposition Exhibit 12, the group notes that it plans to spend $100,000 on a “study of what schools are teaching in gay marriage/civil union regimes.”

"These documents confirm my worst beliefs about NOM's cynical politicking,” said Jeremy Hooper, editor and publisher of Good As You and NOM Exposed partner. “It's hard to find joy in such divisive political games, but I'm certainly glad we know NOM's hurtful plans now before more folks are hurt.”

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Top 5 Things to Know About LGBT Issues

There are roughly 9 million LGBT people in the US and more than 650,000 same-sex couples.

19% of same-sex couples are raising children according to the US Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey.

There is no federal law that consistently protects LGBT individuals from employment discrimination; there are no state laws in 29 states that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, and in 32 states that do so based on gender identity.

More than 100 anti-LGBT bills have been filed in 29 state legislatures.

Marriage equality became the law of the land in June 2015 after the Supreme Court of the United States found bans on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional-and that the fundamenal right to marriage is a fundamental right for all.